Gaza Ceasefire Agreement Used by Israel as Cover for Continued Military Operations, Rights Groups Say

Seven months after a “ceasefire” was brokered to halt Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the agreement has morphed into a deadly cover for continued Israeli military operations in the enclave.

Israeli forces have killed at least 880 Palestinians since then, increasing the total from the war to 72,797, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

With Israel’s next national election expected in September, analysts and human rights officials have warned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deliberately stalling the peace process to appease his right-wing coalition allies and voters.

Mai El-Sheikh, spokesperson for the United Nations Human Rights Office in Palestine, told Al Jazeera that Israel has transformed the “ceasefire” as cover for its ongoing war crimes.

She warned that a humanitarian disaster was being deliberately engineered by Israel through restrictions on food and medicine in order to spread panic among displaced families.

Systematic demolition and displacement

This relentless violence has been accompanied by a renewed, systematic demolition campaign by Israel that has forced Palestinians to inhabit an ever-shrinking space in the besieged Palestinian territory.

The Gaza Rights Center documented at least 12 cases in May where Israeli forces ordered forced evacuations by phone before obliterating residential blocks in the central camps of Nuseirat, Bureij and Maghazi. That coincided with the extensive razing of land east of Deir el-Balah still controlled by Israeli forces.

The rights monitor warned that the operations lack any legitimate military objective, and that its targeting of dilapidated structures in the 35 percent Gaza it does not directly control is a way of making the whole territory uninhabitable.

With nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s buildings destroyed during the ongoing genocide, rights groups say that advance phone warnings – which often, but not always, gives residents time to flee their targeted homes – do not absolve the occupying power of its legal obligations. Instead, the tactic serves as a tool of intimidation in order to maintain a policy of forced displacement for Gaza’s 2.3 million population.

‘A political excuse’

The Israeli leadership’s political calculations driving the ongoing genocide in Gaza are stark. Mohannad Mustafa, an academic specialising in Israeli affairs, said that Netanyahu is sunk in a deep strategic and political crisis due to his failure to achieve his stated objectives in the Gaza war – destroying Hamas.

The prime minister is also facing domestic scrutiny regarding Israel’s two other fronts, with Hezbollah carrying out daily attacks in southern Lebanon and the Iranian government still in power.

“He is obstructing the entry of humanitarian aid, reconstruction efforts, and the deployment of the administrative committee because his ultimate goal remains a comprehensive military occupation of the entire Gaza Strip,” Mustafa said.

Eyad al-Qarra, a Palestinian political analyst based in Khan Younis, said that Israel has used the stipulated disarmament of Palestinian factions, including Hamas, as a pretext to evade its “ceasefire” commitments.

Even if all weapons held by these groups were surrendered, then al-Qarra says Israel would find other justifications to continue its genocide in Gaza.

Despite the weak application of the ceasefire agreement, Gazans still fear its collapse could pave the way for a broader military offensive by Israel.

Meanwhile, an international mechanism designed to enforce the ceasefire has simultaneously crumbled.

The Board of Peace, the controversial US-led international council overseeing the administration of Gaza, has struggled to impose the terms of the ceasefire due to a lack of consensus among its members.

Kenneth Katzman, a US-based researcher, said that US President Donald Trump’s preoccupation with Iran has provided a regional diplomatic void that Israel is now exploiting in Gaza.